Labour’s housing plans to solve the housing crisis are centred around building new houses on the grey and green belt. But, Anne Power argues, that approach ignores the environmental costs as well as the poor outcomes of the post-war New Towns project. Instead of building more homes, we need to learn from our European counterparts on making better use of the existing housing stock and scraps of land within already built up areas. 

Homelessness is on the increase. Private rents are unaffordable in many parts of the country. The supply of social housing is shrinking due to demolition and sales. Owner occupation is out of reach for many people, with average house prices almost nine times higher than average earnings. In London, it increases to 14 times average household income. Our housing crisis is unfolding at an alarming rate. According to Shelter, we need at least 90,000 new social rented homes a year to catch up with rising need and make good the shortfall in housing supply. The money to achieve this is simply not there.

At the same time, the level of underoccupation – in other words, households with too much space – is higher than ever, with over 43 million empty bedrooms, and a large majority of older owner-occupiers having too many rooms and too much space. They face major barriers to downsizing but struggle with maintenance and heating bills.

It is often argued that only 11 to 13 per cent of our land is built on, and so there is plenty of space. But this figure does not allow for the necessary land for our water supply, or for our sewage treatment and disposal, for our power lines and pipes, or for our road network and access.

There is also a mounting environmental crisis. Building outside of our existing built-up areas makes this crisis far worse. It increases the risk of flooding, undermines biodiversity, damages our “carbon sinks” – trees, soil, waterways. In addition, all new building carries a heavy environmental cost in embodied carbon, that is the energy it takes to produce concrete, steel, glass, bricks, and all the required fittings. Meanwhile, our cities and towns are becoming less dense as households become smaller and families search for more space on the outer edges of towns and cities where new housing is mainly built.

It is often argued that only 11 to 13 per cent of our land is built on, and so there is plenty of space. But this figure does not allow for the necessary land for our water supply, or for our sewage treatment and disposal, for our power lines and pipes (carrying electricity and gas), or for our road network and access. Around 40 per cent of the land used for each new home is put under tarmac.

Labour’s plans takes no account of the chequered history of New Towns and their largely unpromising outcomes.

Labour’s ill thought through proposal for New Towns and new homes in the green/grey belt takes scarce account of these factors. Nor does it address these embedded problems. The ideas of taking large tracts of greenfield land, outside existing cities and towns to build large new developments bears no relation to what is actually feasible, acceptable to the public, deliverable, or sustainable in environmental terms. We are already at our environmental limits: biodiversity loss accelerating; flood risks are increasing; soil quality is reducing. Building on new land pushes us further beyond the limit and towards environmental disaster. Labour’s plans takes no account of the chequered history of New Towns and their largely unpromising outcomes.

After World War II, when bomb damage and a six year freeze on building or repair, accompanied by a post-war baby boom, caused chronic shortages, the government not only gave councils carte blanche to build council housing, it also planned 28 new towns, distributed all over the country from Scotland and Wales to Tyneside and Manchester, as well as around London. Each New Town was to house around 50,000 people, in a mixed tenure, mixed use, standalone development.

Across Europe, given chronic housing pressures and rising rents, high density infill building is plugging a major gap in supply, offering younger, more mobile households an alternative to moving out.

The first New Town, Stevenage, was popular, as was the last 30 years later, Milton Keynes. But the record of the rest was almost always shockingly disappointing. Many, if not most, were hard to fill, including towns like Harlow, near London. They often failed to attract the diversity of incomes and tenures to make them viable. Unemployment was often high, due to distance from labour markets. They housed many poorer communities and quickly became run down. Many acquired the reputation and stigma of oversized, hard to let, council estates. An extreme example is Skelmersdale, on the fringes of Liverpool, an area of declining population since the 1930s. In the early 1980s, empty houses in Skelmersdale were put up for sale for £1 each. They sold and today the houses are worth around £150,000 – far lower than average prices, but quite a leg up from £1!

Many housing experts and economists have criticised Labour’s proposals. There are some valuable alternative approaches. Across Europe, given chronic housing pressures and rising rents, high density infill building is plugging a major gap in supply, offering younger, more mobile households an alternative to moving out. We need to borrow from the more structured planning and leasing systems in countries like Italy, Spain, France, and Switzerland, that facilitate a kind of “hybrid” owning-cum-renting offering leasehold occupation in flats with significant service charges. This ensures careful management and maintenance.

Such an approach, if facilitated by streamlined planning, focussed on small sites, could help the many “empty nesters” ready to downsize. If suitable alternative accommodation was available nearby, within the built-up areas where they live, they could still access familiar shops, doctors, and neighbours. In turn, their overlarge homes would be freed up for families.

In order to make full use of this approach and free up capacity, we should support households who agree to downsize with moving grants, an exemption on stamp duty, and other reliefs. It is a complicated process to downsize – decluttering is one of the biggest burdens. But it should not be beyond our wits to evolve ways of helping, very much as we helped households with moving in the early days of slum clearance and council rehousing. Our aging population and the homes they occupy are potentially a valuable resource and the occupants deserve our help.

Small builders can play an invaluable role in developing small sites and converting unused commercial property into homes.

This approach to facilitating downsizing for underoccupiers would address a further problem and make use of another underused resource. There is much spare capacity in our cities, towns, and villages. It includes the many now empty shops, as well as spare, leftover scraps of land within all built up areas. Capacity studies have shown just how many of these leftover spaces there are – enough to provide many of the homes that we need. They are hard to use, given our current planning system, which does not prioritise small sites. Small builders, such as members of the Federation of Master Builders, have trouble accessing these sites, while large developers are not interested in them. Small builders can play an invaluable role in developing small sites and converting unused commercial property into homes.

A major retrofit programme for all existing homes would not only save energy and upgrade conditions; it would reduce the number of empty properties awaiting major repair or demolition.

By reforming our planning system to favour this approach, we could streamline and facilitate small, infill, moderate to high density, inner, urban homes as an alternative to imposing large new developments on our reluctant communities. This would avoid the need for further greenfield building; it would make use of existing infrastructure, such as roads and services; it would be faster to deliver, scheme by scheme; it would densify existing communities, making public transport more viable; it would increase the footfall for local shops and activities; it would increase local revenue and hopefully strengthen local government in the urban areas where it is struggling.

To achieve these benefits, our large existing stock must be protected, be better used, and avoid the threat of demolition. A major retrofit programme for all existing homes would not only save energy and upgrade conditions; it would reduce the number of empty properties awaiting major repair or demolition. It would strengthen existing communities, and protect the existing supply of homes as a way for easing our current housing crisis.

In other words, there are other, more sustainable ways out of our housing crisis. We need to change our thinking, and our plans and proposals in favour of more environmentally sound, more practical, more community-oriented, and more cost-effective solutions.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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